Git Bash Private Keys on Windows

Just hassled through pushing to a remote from Windows with git bash. Summary of what I had to do:
1. Export OpenSSH private key from PuttyGen
2. Place private key named 'id_rsa' inside directory 'Users\username.ssh'.
3. Test with
ssh username@host
4. Odd part is that for the auth to work, I had to add a passphrase to the key via PuttyGen. If I had no passphrase and just hit enter, it would revert to a normal password prompt to the machine.